Every year, the garden and I match wits. Weather, bugs, weeds, predators, failure to thrive; they all conspire to dampen my enthusiasm for the process. To no avail. I am a garden warrior! And yet, it is challenging. Like chess. Every season there is a new development that makes me scratch my head and think, how did I miss that? What did I do wrong? How can I fix this? You might remember that I dug out my seeds this Spring and found that mice had raided my shoebox stash.

After sorting the seeds to salvage what I could, I found new bullet-proof storage for my seeds.

And yet, I was still left with a pile of unsorted seeds and shredded paper that I ran out of time to deal with.

So, I did what I normally do in these situations. I threw a Hail Mary.

I tossed the whole mess into my gutter garden and watered it.

We now have a mystery garden that appears to be primarily peas and a few other things. I'm going to call that a win. :)This is the first in a series of garden stories: Lessons Learned from the Gardenfront, that I'll be featuring in June. In the meantime, stop by and check us out at fb.com/thepocketfarmer where we discuss all things farm and garden every day. You can also find us on Twitter @thepocketfarmer. Hope to see you there! :)

I'd say that's "a win" indeed, for everyone involved. The mice got a good meal or two (you may be a garden warrior, but you can't fool those critters.. they know a kind soul when they see one) and you got a spontaneous mystery garden to add beauty to your surroundings.

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Hi, I'm Sue Pranskus, and this is my sometime blog. It's mostly about my attempts to "green-up" my life. On our little farm we experiment with livestock, gardening, building, repurposing and anything else that we find interesting. Born and bred on the West Coast, I am living in the Midwest by choice, not circumstance. I have built a life based largely on core values and loosely on whimsy. It's that whimsy, though, that gets me in trouble every time!